Coming soon to a theater near you...a crappy version of your favorite book!

“You can’t see it yet.”, I say.
“But, Mom, whyyyyyy not?”, #1 replies.
“Because I want you to read the book first.”

This is the conversation I have had repeatedly, dear readers, since it has become possible to take my kids to the movies with any regularity. And, no I’m not talking about taking them to the ten o’clock show of Clash of the Titans, but this is the argument I have when the girls ask to see a movie that is based on a children’s book. But isn’t that every movie these days?

It seems every movie for children that has been released, as of late, is based on a children’s book. Whatever happened to original ideas? I, personally, am tired of lazy screenwriters, and greedy producers, pillaging the bookshelves of my local library for ideas to warp and narrow, until they create a movie that only resembles the original work in title and maybe a few of the characters.

Look at the recent release Where the Wild Things Are. In the original picture book, Max has no newly dating, single mother. The book has been used to tell an entirely different , specific, story instead of being a validation of every child’s inner monster, divorced parents or not. No matter how the screenwriters tried to include that message, it got lost. Even the Harry Potter movies, waited for with such baited breath, are flat interpretations of that rich, dynamic series. While the casting is stellar, and I did enjoy them, the Hogwarts of my imagination was much better than the (to be fair, excellent) one they created on screen. And entirely the opposite of Where the Wild Things Are, where they made much more of much less, half of each Potter book needed to be cut out for the movie, resulting in much less developed characters and plot lines.

I don’t remember it being this way when I was growing up, or at least not to this extent. Sure, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is classic Roald Dahl, and they did turn Laura Ingalls Wilder’s amazing book series into a television series that reflected the real events of her life practically not at all (I found not one bit of evidence to suggest Wilder ever had a morphine-addicted foster brother), but those books had be written ages before they were turned celluloid. It seems you can not be a successful children’s author without someone buying the rights for the big screen the minute you hit the best-seller list. The aforementioned Harry Potter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, even that damn Twilight series, were all barely in our consciousness as books before we were being asked to line up for tickets. But perhaps this is a reflection of our time. Quick! Dumb it down and package it for the masses so they can mutely stare at a screen! God forbid our kids read a book.

Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoy seeing some of my favorite characters brought to life and it is entertaining to see what actors are chosen for each part (Maggie Smith as Professor MacGonagall is pure genius!). But my fear is, allowing my children to see these films before they’ve read the books, they will be more likely to pass over some great titles on the library shelves thinking they’ve experienced the equivalent of reading them. When I was a child learning to read, my father told me that books should be like “a movie inside your head”. You get to do the casting and decorate the sets. Seeing a movie based on a book before reading it, will deprive them of imagining the characters and settings for themselves and developing that kind of imagination not only makes you a life-long reader, but also develops creativity that can be channeled into writing.

Of course this phenomenon is not limited only to children’s books. Many of my favorite adult novels have been butchered by the slaughterhouse of Hollywood. I still haven’t forgiven them for turning one of the most poignant scenes in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, into a joke. But I am less worked up about these offenses than I am about my children being robbed of meeting some of the most amazing characters, instead of their big-screen doppelgangers. There are so many characters that I considered friends as a child and are still so dear to me - Harriet the Spy and her tomato sandwiches, animal rights activist, Fern Arable, and another, who I will lay myself prostrate across the doorway of theaters everywhere to prevent little girls from meeting her first on the big screen, as I have heard rumors of a movie being made, Ramona Quimby. I actually teared up when #1 was old enough to begin Ramona the Pest.

So I will fight the fight when I can. I know it’s not possible to prevent them from seeing every movie whose book of origin I consider to be far superior, but those books are so, so important. To borrow a line once again from You’ve Got Mail*, "When you read a book as a child it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your life does."

*Jesus, what is my obsession with quoting this movie? I might as well right a book The Tao of Nora Ephron.